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SANCTIFICATION, SATISFACTION, AND THE PURPOSE OF PURGATORY

Neal Judisch

Abstract

Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in the doctrine of purgatory

among Christian philosophers. Some of these philosophers argue for the

existence of purgatory from principles consistent with historic Protestant

theology and then attempt, on the basis of those principles, to formulate a

distinctively Protestant view of purgatory – i.e., one that differs essentially

from the Catholic doctrine as regards purgatory’s raison d’etre. Here I aim to

show that Protestant models of purgatory which are grounded in the

necessity of becoming fully sanctified before entering heaven (Sanctification

Models) fail to contrast materially with the Catholic model of purgatory,

which has historically been formulated in terms of the necessity of making

satisfaction for sins already forgiven (The Satisfaction Model). Indeed, I shall

argue that contrary to widespread assumption, the Sanctification Model and

the Satisfaction Model are equivalent when the latter is properly understood.

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Purgatory is the process of purification for those who die in the love of God but who are not completely

imbued with that love. Sacred Scripture teaches us that we must be purified if we are to enter into

perfect and complete union with God. Jesus Christ, who became the perfect expiation for our sins and

took upon himself the punishment that was our due, brings us God’s mercy and love. But before we

enter into God’s Kingdom every trace of sin within us must be eliminated, every imperfection in our

soul must be corrected. This is exactly what takes place in Purgatory. – John Paul II

A man is punished by the very things through which he sins. – Wis 11.16

I. Introduction

Among the few encouraging developments on the ecumenical frontier in recent years is the

noteworthy warming of Protestant sensibilities to the idea of purgatory, understood as an

intermediate postmortem state in which souls destined for heaven are purified or made fit

for heavenly life.1 Belief in purgatory has of course been a mainstay of Catholic (but not of

Protestant) theology for centuries, and Catholics, true to form, are none too likely to give it

up. So to the extent that Catholics and Protestants can manage to achieve agreement on the

reality of an intermediate purgatorial state, this achievement may be welcomed by the

ecumenically-minded as a piece of genuine progress.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that the arguments for purgatory which have

been advanced by at least some Protestants who affirm its existence make clear how little

this otherwise encouraging development must result from any authentic increase in

appreciation as to where the relevant points of disagreement (and agreement) between

Catholics and Protestants actually lie. Specifically, it is clear that the arguments in question

were formulated with the express intent of avoiding certain perceived errors and abuses

which have long been associated with the Catholic theory of purgatory – theological

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muddles which, according to these Protestant purgatory proponents, supply the Catholic

doctrine of purgatory with its theoretical underpinning and motivational force – but which

in fact betray a misconception of what the Catholic theory is. On this view of things, the

Catholic doctrine had its genesis and finds its nourishment in a conception of salvation

according to which a person is put right with God more or less as a result of their own good

works and meritorious efforts, in contrast to the Protestant view which specifies that a

person’s right standing before God is entirely a matter of grace, gratuitously applied to the

individual who puts his faith in the meritorious achievements of Christ. This perceived

difference between Catholicism and Protestantism is then carried over and reflected in the

function assigned to purgatory, or the purpose it is thought to serve, within these

contrasting soteriological schemes: on the Protestant version purgatory exists so that the

heaven-bound individual who requires postmortem sanctification may complete the

process of being made intrinsically holy (as distinguished from being ‘reckoned’ holy

before the divine tribunal on account of an imputed righteousness not inherently

possessed) prior to entering into the glories of heaven, whereas the Catholic version has it

that the heaven-bound individual who has not, at the time of death, made up for all the

debts he has accumulated through his sins must suffer postmortem punishment with a

view toward making satisfaction for them; this individual may then “enter into the joy of his

Lord,” but only after his Lord, by way of preparation for the joyous homecoming, has

exacted an appropriately agonizing amount of vengeance upon him for a suitable stretch of

time.

Such appears to be the general picture. So, to take a recent example, one

philosopher who operates within the mindset just described contends that the difference

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between his view of purgatory, which is targeted at the completion of the sanctification

process, and the Catholic view, which focuses on satisfaction for sins, is that the former “is

forward looking in that its purpose is to provide an occasion for the fulfillment of a future

aim” (viz. intrinsic, personal holiness), whereas the latter “is backward-looking as its

purpose is to provide an occasion for the remission of past failures.”2 To put it in other

terms, the Protestant version is aimed at ‘purging’ the “disposition to sin” which remains in

the incompletely sanctified believer even though the penalty for his sins was paid in toto by

Christ, while the Catholic version is aimed at ‘purging’ “the penalty for sin or sin itself” as

opposed to the sinful disposition.3 This difference of purpose is then understood, in turn, to

be an inevitable outworking of the fundamentally contrastive soteriological orientations of

Catholicism and Protestantism: in effect, Protestants think that Jesus paid the penalty for

our sins, but Catholics don’t think that. Accordingly, it’s no surprise that since the Catholic

view of purgatory requires the individual to make satisfaction for his own failures, it

“undermines the sufficiency of Christ’s work as a satisfaction for sin” and indeed “renders

Christ’s work superfluous,” whereas the “Sanctification Model of purgatory does not

undermine the sufficiency of Christ’s work as a satisfaction for sin” and therefore

“alleviates at least one standard objection that Protestants might have against purgatory.”4

Thus reassured, Protestants may in good faith avail themselves of the notion of purgatory

and all the theoretical benefits pertaining thereto, for even if the Catholic view of purgatory

is “fundamentally incompatible with Protestantism” as regards the sufficiency (and, it

would seem, the overall non-superfluity) of Christ’s atoning sacrifice, it doesn’t follow that

every version of purgatory likewise renders “Christ’s salvific work pointless”5 or otherwise

conflicts with any given “cornerstone of Protestant theology.”6

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It seems to me reasonably safe to infer from remarks like these that whatever

exactly a Protestant/Catholic consensus on the existence of purgatory might suggest in the

abstract, in this case it appears to represent nothing more than the mutual affirmation of a

comparatively tangential doctrine to which both parties have arrived in wildly different

ways and for irreconcilably opposed reasons. Thus the real agreement concerning the

necessity of purgatory (for at least a large class of individuals) turns out simply to highlight

the radical underlying rift between Catholic and Protestant thought generally, a rift which

looks to remain as unbridgeable as ever. In this essay I would like to make one very small

contribution to the ecumenical effort by showing that the Protestant version of purgatory

just introduced is equivalent to the Catholic one. For ease of reference I shall continue to

refer to the Protestant conception and the Catholic conception as the Sanctification Model

and the Satisfaction Model respectively. Thus my thesis may be rephrased as expressing

the contention that the Satisfaction Model and the Sanctification Model amount to the same

thing, so long as the Satisfaction Model is appropriately understood. To put it another,

slightly less ambitious-sounding way, I aim to show that the Catholic doctrine of purgatory

not only permissibly can but in fact should be understood as equivalent to the Sanctification

Model of purgatory. Whether every individual Catholic over the past two millennia has

understood the doctrine in precisely this way is, of course, another matter entirely; but so

far as I can see the answer to this question (which is almost certainly “No”) is neither here

nor there. For present purposes I shall simply take my cues from the official teaching of the

Catholic Church and – to allay any suspicions that my own interpretation of the Catholic

position is sneaky or idiosyncratic or excessively charitable or just plain “made up” – I shall

also appeal periodically to figures who can reasonably be regarded as possessing a

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measure of representational authority within the world of Catholicism. (Popes, for

instance.) I begin with what I take to be the common ground between Christians, of

whatever stripe, who believe in the reality of purgatory.

II. Why Purgatory?

Answers to this question vary, but the common thread running throughout the range of

available responses is simply that (i) gracious pardon for sins notwithstanding, we cannot

enter into and enjoy full union with God without being completely and finally liberated

from the influence or ‘dominion’ of sin and made intrinsically pure and unwaveringly

upright of heart; yet (ii) hardly anybody we’ve heard of ever attains that degree of holiness

before they die and frankly, to judge by the look of things, we probably aren’t going to

either; but since (iii) God cannot simply ‘zap’ us with a sanctifying ray and unilaterally

bestow a radically altered nature upon us all in one go, it had better be the case that (iv)

there is some kind of postmortem process, or state of being, whereby we are at last

transformed into the sorts of creatures who can enter into and ceaselessly celebrate that

perfect and eternal union with God held out to us in the life of the world to come.

Some readers will no doubt wish to see a fuller defense of the assumption in (iii);

why can’t God unilaterally perfect us at the point of death, making up for what we lack in

the way of sanctification by sheer divine fiat? And here again the reasons provided vary.

According to some philosophers, an externally imposed operation which consists in the

instant and irrevocable transformation of our natures to the level of perfection required for

heavenly life would simply be too profound and sudden a change for any of us to survive.

Maybe it isn’t such a stretch to imagine St Francis getting through the ordeal more or less

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intact, but the rest of us would hardly recognize ourselves. And the intuition here is that

we wouldn’t recognize ourselves because we wouldn’t be ourselves: the medicine couldn’t

come in that heavy a dose without killing the patient, so to speak, so not even God could

renovate us so radically in one fell swoop and simultaneously preserve the sort of

continuity required for personal identity through the envisioned metamorphosis. 7 Others

contend that even if such externally induced sanctification could occur without God’s

violating a person’s persistence conditions, there must be morally sufficient reasons for Him

not to do it. For if we concede that God could carry out this kind of operation at the point of

death without contravening any moral principles or preventing any valuable state of affairs

which would otherwise have obtained, then we have to face the question why God doesn’t

just perform this feat right now, right here in this life. Yet (so the argument runs) to the

extent that we cannot answer this question we compromise our strategic posture vis-à-vis

the argument from evil, since if God could unilaterally sanctify us at death without

preventing any greater good – say, the good of a gradually sanctified nature brought about

through the cooperative interplay between divine grace and significant human freedom –

then there’s no obvious reason why He couldn’t eliminate all the post-conversion evil we

bring about by just cutting to the chase and unilaterally sanctifying us here and now. So if

God could do this but refrained from doing it, He’d be guilty of allowing all sorts of evil

which could be “properly eliminated,” or which He could prevent without introducing a

greater evil or averting a greater good, in which case we’d have no reply to the atheist’s

insistence that this is exactly what God would do if He really were everything traditional

theism imagines Him to be.8 And finally, in a similar vein, others have argued that any

teleological theodicy which stresses the process of growth towards a moral and spiritual

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ideal as being essential to the genuine realization of this ideal (John Hick’s ‘soul-making’

approach is an example) must likewise have recourse to a purgatorial state, since an

impeccably sanctified character bestowed from without at the time of death, as opposed to

an increasingly sanctified character which continues to be developed after death from

within, would short-circuit the authentic maturation of the soul and therefore undermine

the justification for evil proposed by the theodicy.9

On the whole I think each of these arguments for (iii) has something to commend it.

Since my aim here is less to establish purgatory’s existence and more to reconcile two

allegedly rival conceptions of it, however, I shall forego any detailed discussion of them and

take the reality of purgatory as read. Supposing then we grant arguendo that belief in

purgatory is sufficiently well motivated for Catholics and Protestants alike, we should take

a moment to make explicit the function assigned to purgatory according to (iv); and to this

end it will be useful to borrow two terms10 from Justin Barnard, the philosopher upon

whom I relied to represent the Sanctification Model approach above. Let us say that a

person S is ‘lapsable’ iff S possesses saving faith11 in Christ and S does not (yet) possess a

thoroughly sanctified nature; and let’s call a person S ‘sanctified’ iff S possesses saving faith

in Christ and also possesses a thoroughly sanctified nature. To say that S possesses a

thoroughly sanctified nature is to say that S cannot sin, that S’s character and dispositions

are ‘fixed’ in such a way that under no nomologically possible circumstances would S

commit evil. Putting the same thing more positively, S’s will is one in purpose and holiness

with the will of God. His character exemplifies the quality medieval theologians termed

impeccability, the characteristic feature of the redeemed in heaven who, according to St

Augustine, have attained to that “truer” and “superior” kind of freedom (modeled upon

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God’s) which involves both the ability to not sin – an ability we haven’t really enjoyed since

Adam’s fall – and the inability to sin – an inability we’ve never enjoyed at all.12 Thus the

sanctified may be thought of as possessing a kind of moral libertas which mirrors the divine

freedom, a state of being which St Augustine construes as a heavenly reward, whereas the

lapsable are destined to but have not yet attained this moral perfection of their natures.

So finally, with all this in place, we can say that the exclusive object of purgatory

according to the Sanctification Model is the transformation of the lapsable into the

sanctified: by itself saving faith is necessary for getting into purgatory and sufficient for

avoiding hell; being lapsable is necessary and sufficient for getting into purgatory; and

being sanctified is necessary and sufficient for getting out of purgatory (or in rare cases just

skipping it altogether) and getting into heaven. Purgation is thus the means by which the

Christian’s inherent moral condition “catches up” to his unpenalizable status, purchased by

Christ, before the tribunal of God. That is what the Sanctification Model says.

III. Sins and Satisfactions

We know, then, that there is nothing sinful about the sanctified as regards their characters

or dispositions: they love God and neighbor with all their hearts as a matter of routine. And

since Jesus made satisfaction for the sins they had committed prior to becoming sanctified

there is nothing ‘categorically’ or ‘legally’ bad about them either, in the sense that they bear

no guilt for all the wrongs they have done and are in consequence subject to no retributive

punishment. Now the Satisfaction Model of purgatory as sketched above is consistent with

this description of those who have gone through purgatory as being both inherently and

legally upright – as having been ‘purged’ both of the “disposition to sin” and of “the penalty

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for sin or sin itself” – but even if the end result of purgation on the Satisfaction Model is

consistent with the ultimate result according to the Sanctification Model, the purpose of

purgation on the Satisfaction approach evidently isn’t the “forward looking” one of

producing sanctified individuals, but appears primarily to involve the “backward looking”

aspect of meeting out retributive punishments and penalties for the wrongs they have

done.

Indeed, when we reflect that Barnard’s description of the Satisfaction Model fails to

include the suggestion that any sanctification might be taking place in purgatory at all, it is

tempting to conclude that the latter aspect (the retributive punishment bit) is really the

main point, maybe even the sole point, of purgatory on a Catholic view of things. Thus

Barnard: “According to the Satisfaction Model, purgatory is a temporal state of existence

after death the purpose of which is to make satisfaction (i.e., payment) for sins committed

on earth for which sufficient satisfaction was not rendered by the time of death.”13 Nor is

the assumption Barnard voices here peculiar to him. For example, after quoting the

relevant portion from the Council of Florence (1439), which specifies that “if truly penitent

people die in the love of God before they have made satisfaction for acts and omissions by

worthy fruits of repentance, their souls are cleansed after death by cleansing pains,”14

Michael Stoeber concludes,

From the official Vatican standpoint, then, purgatory is understood as a

realm of physical or mental punishment, more in negative terms of painful

retribution than in positive conceptions of spiritual learning and growth.

Indeed, though the latter function is not ruled out in the traditional

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formulation, there is the sense that one can ‘burn off’, as it were, the actions

and effects of past moral improprieties, simply through passive suffering.15

And the mere passive suffering of painful retribution, of course, hardly suggests that any

spiritual learning and growth are in view here at all; what it does appear to suggest, and

what it has strongly suggested to Barnard at any rate, is that Calvin’s classification of the

Catholic conception of purgatory as a “horrid blasphemy” and a “deadly device of Satan”

“seems fitting from the perspective of Protestant theology,” inasmuch as Protestant

theology protests that Christ’s satisfaction for sin isn’t simply empty or fictitious.16

Over against this assessment of the Catholic position stands the Catholic position’s

assessment of itself. And as far as I can tell, this latter assessment makes it tolerably clear

that the “official Vatican standpoint” is similar indeed to the official Barnardian one. In a

nutshell, the Catholic doctrine says that (1) the sins of Christians have been forgiven in

virtue of the satisfaction rendered for them by Christ, and that (2) as a consequence, they

will not suffer ‘eternal punishment’ for their sins. It then adds to this the provisos that (3)

insofar as there remain ‘temporal punishments’ attached to sins for which these Christians

themselves must ‘make satisfaction’, it follows that (4) if they have not ‘made satisfaction’

for these sins prior to death then they’ve got to go through purgatory. Now when the

Catholic doctrine says all this, the statements in (1) and (2) should be taken as stating that

Christians will suffer no ‘legal’ penalty for their sins because Christ took the punishment for

those sins upon Himself so as to secure their forgiveness, and the provisos in (3) and (4)

should be understood as specifying the need for lapsable Christians to undergo a purgative

regimen aimed at the rehabilitation or restoration of their spiritual health. That is, the

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Catholic doctrine of purgatory says that purgatory is for Christians who, despite the

cancellation of their ‘legal’ penalties before God, still need to become thoroughly sanctified.

Admittedly, the terminological devices involved in this formulation tend to invite

misgiving. But the juridical/legal language in which the doctrine is cast is simply the

characteristic mode of expression that the Western tradition, both Catholic and Protestant,

has historically used to get across whatever it’s trying to say. Doubtless this mode of

expression can be misleading and at times does more harm than good (in fact the case

before us seems a promising candidate for one of those times), but however that may be

there is no question that the vision of purgatory expounded here is one with which

Protestants (and Eastern Orthodox, too) should be perfectly happy.17 To see this, however,

one must first appreciate how terms like ‘satisfaction’ and ‘temporal punishment’ are being

deployed by those who use them to describe what’s going on in purgatory. And in order to

get straight on these terms it is of first importance to recognize that according to Catholic

thought sin has a “double consequence” which corresponds to two distinct kinds of

punishment for sin. That is to say, a given sinful action or omission must be thought of as

resulting in two kinds of consequence, and corresponding to each kind of consequence is a

particular form of punishment appropriate to it. As regards the first consequence of sin –

or, if you prefer, the first aspect of the “double consequence” of sin; I take these expressions

to be synonymous – sin “deprives us of communion with God” which in turn “makes us

incapable of eternal life;” and the “privation” of eternal life “is called the ‘eternal

punishment’ of sin.”18 Thus we can see that the first consequence of sin is to be identified

with the deprivation of the sinner’s communion with God, and the punishment attending

this consequence of sin is the sinner’s exclusion from eternal life: i.e. his consignment to the

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eternal punishment of sin, or ‘hell’. Now this ‘eternal punishment’, which is one of the two

consequences of sin, should be understood as corresponding to what Barnard has in mind

when he speaks of the “penalty for sin.” In other words, this consequence of sin relates to

the ‘legal’ debt we owe to God and for which, as St Anselm insisted in Cur Deus Homo, only a

person who is both God and Man could make a satisfaction acceptable to divine justice.19 It

follows, then, that we ourselves cannot make satisfaction for this consequence of sin (i.e.

we cannot ‘purge’ the “penalty for sin or sin itself”) on the Catholic view; for that is a work

of Christ only. And when we appropriate the satisfaction Christ made on our behalf by

repenting and putting our faith in Him we receive “forgiveness of sin and restoration of

communion with God,” which, in consequence, releases us from the obligation to pay the

penalty for our sins and entails that we are no longer deprived or “made incapable of” of

eternal life.20

So far so good. But recall that there is a second consequence of sin in addition to the

one above. For although forgiveness of sins and restoration of communion with God

together “entail the remission of the eternal punishment of sin,” the “temporal punishment

of sin remains”– and it is of course the ‘temporal punishment’ for which we are expected to

‘make satisfaction’, either in this life or in the purgatorial fires of the next.21 Now, this

element of the current approach will likely be regarded as rendering the Satisfaction Model

flatly and irredeemably incompatible with the Sanctification Model, since it may easily

sound as though it takes back from us with one hand what it had given us with the other –

Jesus made satisfaction for sins, it assures us, but for some reason or other, it goes on to

say, we’ve got to make our own satisfaction anyhow; and that is precisely the suggestion

proponents of the Sanctification Model are eager to repudiate. Yet to charge the

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Satisfaction Model with doublespeak on this point would be to ignore the fact that the

‘temporal punishment’ for sin really does correspond to a distinct consequence of sin and

that this consequence is entirely different from the first one, the one that corresponds to

the ‘eternal punishment’ of sin described above.

In reality, the second consequence of sin simply isn’t about legal ‘penalties’ which

need to be ‘settled’ in the divine law court or accumulated ‘debts’ for which the sinner must

make ‘payment’; nor is the ‘temporal punishment’ corresponding to this consequence a

matter of vindictive ‘retribution’ externally imposed by God the Judge upon hapless,

passively suffering sinners; nor, finally, is the ‘satisfaction’ required of such sinners a

matter of accruing enough merit to balance out their demerits or, alternatively, just gritting

their teeth and letting God extract His pound of flesh. Rather, the consequence of sin which

issues in ‘temporal punishment’ is identical to the corrosive effect of sin itself upon the

individual’s soul; the ‘temporal punishment’ of this consequence, accordingly, consists in

the individual’s enduring through and struggling to rectify the disorder of his soul and

spiritual ill health that sinful behavior brings in its wake; and, finally, ‘making satisfaction’

for sins, in this context, is to be understood as the individual’s doing whatever is required

(and allowing God to do to him whatever’s required) to restore his spiritual well-being and

so to be ‘purged’ of his self-destructive attachment to sin. To put it another way, sinfulness –

the self-reinforcing urge to commit iniquity introduced through original sin and fostered by

the habitual exercise of our capacity for it, or what the tradition simply calls

‘concupiscence’ – just is the second consequence of sin, the ‘temporal punishment’ for

which sinners must suffer here or in purgatory. It is not some additional ‘judicial’ penalty

God imposes on sinners from on high with the expectation of their finding a way, somehow

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or other, to ‘make satisfaction’ in the form of ‘payment’ for their debts; it is, as it were, the

‘natural’ punishment sin itself brings upon those who commit it, rather as virtue is said to

bring with it its own reward.

Once these clarifications are grasped and held firmly in mind it should be perfectly

obvious that the model of purgatory expounded in the relevant sections of the Catechism of

the Catholic Church is straightforwardly equivalent to the Sanctification Model, not

something that stands in sworn opposition to it. Notice, for example, that it is precisely the

“unhealthy attachment to creatures” (i.e. a sinful disposition) which is said to result from

sin and issue in “temporal punishment” for it, and, moreover, that purgatory is identified as

the process by which the individual is purified from such attachment:

To understand this doctrine and practice of the Church, it is necessary to

understand that sin has a double consequence. Grave sin deprives us of

communion with God and therefore makes us incapable of eternal life, the

privation of which is called the “eternal punishment” of sin. On the other

hand every sin, even venial, entails an unhealthy attachment to creatures,

which must be purified either here on earth, or after death in the state called

Purgatory. This purification frees one from what is called the “temporal

punishment” of sin.22

Further, the notion that the ‘temporal punishment’ suffered in purgatory is some sort of

“backward looking” retribution God extracts from individuals in view of their “past

failures” is explicitly repudiated, since the punishment in question “must not be conceived

of as a kind of vengeance inflicted by God from without, but as following from the very

nature of sin.”23 And it follows from the nature of sin because sin doesn’t only harm the

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person against whom it is perpetrated or amass a whole ton of debt before God or

whatever, it “also injures and weakens the sinner himself, as well as his relationships with

God and neighbor”24 because it “creates a proclivity to sin; it engenders vice by repetition of

the same acts [and] results in perverse inclinations which cloud conscience and corrupt the

concrete judgment of good and evil,” which in turn explains why “sin tends to reproduce

itself and reinforce itself.”25 Thus although “Absolution takes away sin” – i.e. although it

removes what Barnard calls the “penalty for sin or sin itself” – receiving this forgiveness

“does not remedy all the disorders sin has caused” – i.e. it doesn’t automatically eliminate

what Barnard calls the person’s “disposition to sin.” Consequently, once he has been

“Raised up from sin [i.e. forgiven], the sinner must still recover his full spiritual health by

doing something more to make amends for the sin: he must ‘make satisfaction for’ or

‘expiate’ his sins,” an activity which “is also called ‘penance’.”26 And if his “full spiritual

health” hasn’t been recovered by the time he dies, then he’s going to have to keep on

‘making satisfaction’ and ‘doing penance’ right through the fires of purgatory until he gets it

back.

So all of this talk about “satisfaction” and “expiation” and “suffering” and “penance”

and the like does not refer to the poor soul’s attempt to appease the fury of God by offering

itself up as an object of divine vengeance; it is aimed precisely at the “forward looking” goal

of the transformation of the “old man” into the “new man” – in other words, at the

conversion of the lapsable into the sanctified:

The forgiveness of sin and restoration of communion with God entail the

remission of the eternal punishment of sin, but temporal punishment of sin

remains. While patiently bearing sufferings and trials of all kinds and, when

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the day comes, serenely facing death, the Christian must strive to accept this

temporal punishment of sin as a grace. He should strive by works of mercy

and charity, as well as by prayer and the various practices of penance, to put

off completely the “old man” and to put on the “new man.”27

And this is why, finally, the kind of “conversion which proceeds from a fervent charity can

attain the complete purification of the sinner in such a way that no punishment would

remain,” since such a comprehensive and profound perfection of the entire life’s effort

toward conversio, or reorientation toward God and away from sin, signals the end “of the

struggle ... directed toward holiness and eternal life” whereby the Christian “seeks to purify

himself of his sin and to become holy with the help of God’s grace.”28 But to be purified and

to become holy with the help of God’s grace is of course equivalent to successfully

consummating the sanctification process; and whenever that process has come to

completion ‘temporal punishment’ naturally has no further application, since the whole

telos of ‘temporal punishment’ is to spur us onward toward precisely this goal.

Putting it all together, it follows that the exclusive object of purgatory according to

the Satisfaction Model is to allow those who die in the love of God to suffer the ‘temporal

punishments’ and ‘make satisfaction’ for sins, where this in turn is strictly equated with the

process whereby the forgiven-but-lapsable individual is purified of his disposition to sin and

made inherently holy. Therefore, by itself saving faith is necessary for getting into

purgatory and sufficient for avoiding hell; being lapsable is necessary and sufficient for

getting into purgatory; and being sanctified is necessary and sufficient for getting out of

purgatory (or in rare cases simply giving it a pass) and getting into heaven. In other words:

the Satisfaction Model is equivalent to the Sanctification Model.

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There is a prettier and somewhat less cumbersome and distracting way the same

thing could be said. According to the Satisfaction Model à la Pope Benedict XVI, for

example, the tripartite division of hell, purgatory and heaven maps neatly onto what may

be considered the three potential spiritual states of an individual at death. At one extreme

lies the frightful possibility of persons who have “totally destroyed their desire for truth

and readiness to love” and “who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within

themselves” to the point that the destruction of the good within them is “irrevocable,”

which leaves them simply “beyond remedy.” That’s “what we mean by the word Hell.” At

the other extreme stand the sanctified, “who are utterly pure, completely permeated by

God, and thus fully open to their neighbours – people for whom communion with God even

now gives direction to their entire being and whose journey towards God only brings to

fulfillment what they already are.” This is the group of persons who populate heaven. And

somewhere in between these angels and demons are those who have “in the depths of their

being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God. In the concrete choices of life,

however, it is covered over by ever new compromises with evil – much filth covers purity,

but the thirst for purity remains and it still constantly re-emerges from all that is base and

remains present in the soul.” For this batch there is purgatory, an intermediate state in

which “purification and healing which mature the soul for communion with God” takes

place. It is a “fire” through which they must pass “so as to become fully open to receiving

God and able to take [their] place at the table of the eternal marriage-feast,” where the

“fire” in question is, at its root, identical to the “gaze” and “the touch of [Christ’s] heart”

which “heals us through an undeniably painful transformation” but which, “as it burns us,

transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves” and “thus totally of God.”29

19

So, to put the conclusion reached above a bit more inspiringly, purgatory is the purifying

and transformative postmortem encounter with Christ which takes the broken and sick and

heals them, making them fit to enjoy unsullied and unending communion with God and the

saints in the life everlasting. That is what the Satisfaction Model says.

IV. Objections & Replies

I would like in this section to consider three objections, not so much to the Satisfaction

Model itself, but rather to the suggestion that any Catholic thinker prior to, say, the mid-

twentieth century actually thought of purgatory that way. In a sense, of course, it doesn’t

really make a difference, since once the terminology is understood as I’ve argued it should

be the model is easily seen to cohere with the terse and sketchy remarks about purgatory

codified in the relevant documents antedating our time, so there isn’t any impediment to

present-day Catholics accepting a position on purgatory which is identical in content to the

Protestant position. But at least as regards my modest ecumenical hopes, it would still be

nice to demonstrate that the Satisfaction Model I have described doesn’t amount to a shifty

or disingenuous about-face on the part of contemporary Catholics who might simply be

trying through a clever redefinition of terms to distance themselves from the lurid ideas of

their less sophisticated predecessors. Perhaps more importantly, it seems reasonable to

suspect that some of the practices and teachings related to the traditional doctrine of

purgatory – e.g., the granting of indulgences for departed souls – conflict with what I’ve

argued the point of purgatory really is on the Catholic approach. However, what I want to

begin with is one difficulty for the Satisfaction Model which does not connect with any

controversial praxis or dogma but which is still worth pursuing because of its intrinsic

20

interest. I have in mind the contention, voiced by St Bonaventure and probably assumed by

others, that souls in purgatory cannot sin.

The assumption is attractive: we don’t want souls in purgatory retrogressing but

continuing onward and upward, perhaps fueled by something akin to what Barnard terms

the “internal momentum” which carries them inexorably toward their final sanctification.30

Additionally, the cessation of sin and continuous forward progression here imagined may

be thought to provide a salutary, merciful assurance to souls in purgatory that they’ll

ultimately make it out on the right side of things, that their eventual salvation is

guaranteed. Indeed, this appears to be the primary reason for which St Bonaventure

insisted that souls in purgatory couldn’t sin, so as to controvert the suggestion that

uncertainty about their fate is one of the torments with which souls in purgatory are

afflicted.31 Still, the obvious worry is that if souls in purgatory cannot sin, and if to be

unable to sin is to be sanctified, and if to be sanctified is sufficient for getting out of

purgatory and into heaven, then we have a contradiction on our hands. In particular, it

looks as if the only business a sanctified soul could have in purgatory would be to suffer

retributive pains for all the rotten things they had done in life, which runs against what I’ve

said the purpose of purgatory is supposed to be.

So what to say? It seems to me that a person in purgatory may have certainty that

he will ultimately be saved “as through fire” without its being the case that this certainty is

grounded in introspective awareness of his inability to sin, together with an abductive

inference to the effect that he must therefore be heaven-bound. (Why couldn’t God just

relay his fate before sending him off to get purged, as in Newman’s Dream of Gerontius?)

And I see no reason in the abstract why the trajectory of souls in purgatory couldn’t be

21

characterized by a continual “upward trend” even if there are “dips” in the form of

stumblings and sins, particularly sins of omission, along the way. Still, there is some

plausibility to the thesis that among the helps God extends to people experiencing

postmortem purgation is an impressive type of divine grace, which involves inter alia

preserving them from falling into any further sin or “getting any worse.” But notice that

even if this comforting proposal is correct it does not conflict with the condition stipulating

that souls in purgatory are not yet sanctified and thus does not contradict the Satisfaction

Model. For to be providentially preserved from sinning is not equivalent to possessing a

sanctified nature. If S possesses a sanctified nature, recall, it follows that conditionals of

the form “If S were in situation C, S would not sin” are necessarily true, true in all

(nomologically) possible circumstances, whereas if S is simply preserved by divine grace

from sinning it could be that there are many possible situations such that S would freely sin

in them.32 Those, on this hypothesis, are the situations God sees to it S isn’t placed in while

he’s working his way through purgatory. Thus one could agree with St Bonaventure that it

isn’t possible for people in purgatory to sin while simultaneously holding that nobody in

purgatory is already sanctified, since there is an acceptable sense in which both scenarios

(the already-sanctified scenario and the special-grace scenario) support the proposition

that individuals in purgatory “cannot sin,” albeit in different ways.

Naturally, one wonders how genuinely conducive to spiritual fitness purgatory

could be if things were “rigged” so that the souls there could do nothing at all to impede

their own progress (even if they themselves might not know they couldn’t do this), but it

seems to me too quick to infer that a purgatory like this couldn’t get the job done. To be

sure, we may not be as inclined to applaud purgatory graduates here as we would if we

22

knew there’d been a live possibility of regression or loss, and maybe we feel that the soul’s

progress wouldn’t be all that laudable unless God were to back off a bit and let the soul

more or less “go it alone.” But I think these intuitions tend to misdirect the judgment. For

one thing, purgatory isn’t happily thought of as a ‘place’ for the acquisition of merit or the

accumulation of accolades and rewards; the point is rather rehabilitation and growth, the

eradication of dispositions to sin and the up-building and “setting” of dispositions toward

holiness instead. And it isn’t at all obvious why this couldn’t take place unless God were

prepared to disengage to the point of allowing souls in purgatory to bring genuine harm

upon themselves or frustrate their own goals. Some analogies: the child’s father sees to it

that she uses training wheels at the outset, but she still learns how to ride; the coach makes

sure her gymnast invariably has someone around to spot him, but he eventually works up

strength and poise sufficient to perform the acrobatics by himself; Barnum and Bailey insist

that their neophyte trapezist always be hooked up to a harness, but only so that she stays

alive and in one piece long enough to learn how to fly around the tent without it. These are

only analogies; but the point behind them is not inapplicable to the case of interest.

So I see no reason to conclude that souls in purgatory couldn’t both be lapsable and

be kept by God from damaging themselves further through fresh sin until they finally

satisfy their temporal punishments and push on. But however that issue should be settled

there remains a more serious question about the viability of my interpretation of the

Satisfaction Model, and that is the question of how the practice of granting indulgences for

the aid of souls in purgatory could be consistent with a view on which purgation is aimed at

sanctification, not at “paybacks.” Because here is how things look: it looks as if the Pope is

transferring a surplus of “merit” the Church has “stored up” and applying it to souls in

23

purgatory with the intention of shortening their sentence or covering a portion of their

remaining debts, which wouldn’t make sense unless these souls are being sent to purgatory

for purely remunerative purposes after all. Now I have no present interest in defending the

Catholic doctrine of indulgences, still less the unfortunate abuses for which this doctrine

has provided occasion. But since it is reasonably clear that the Satisfaction Model really

does say what I’ve said it does, and since it is equally clear that Catholics insist on making

room for indulgences nevertheless, charity demands contemplating the possibility that

there is some way to understand the granting of indulgences which renders it consistent

with the Satisfaction Model.

As it happens one needn’t look far for the basic outlines of such an understanding.

To begin, if we grant the supposition that prayers offered on another’s behalf can aid them

in their sanctification while they are alive, then, inasmuch as the ties which “knit and bind”

believers together in the “mystical body of Christ” cannot be broken by death, there is no

principled reason to suppose that Christians cannot pray for the dead with the pious

expectation that their prayers will make a difference to the purgatorial progress of the

dearly departed.33 This I take it is something with which anyone who believes in purgatory,

and who concedes the efficacy of prayer, could agree. But if obtaining indulgences on

behalf of the dead may be seen as an extension of the practice of praying for their

advancement in sanctification – if it’s motivated by the same convictions and anticipates

the same results – then it follows that there is a way of understanding indulgences which is

consistent with the Satisfaction Model. I am not, of course, claiming that anyone willing to

countenance purgatory or praying for the deceased should ipso facto look favorably upon

indulgences, or even that they shouldn’t be hostile to the very idea of them. I am claiming

24

that if there is a consistent set S of ecclesiological-cum-theological propositions such that S

conjoined with the Satisfaction Model yields the possibility of granting or obtaining

efficacious indulgences for the dead then this practice is not inconsistent with the

Satisfaction Model, regardless of whether the propositions in S are true or whether they’re

totally off the mark. To rephrase, my interest here is in whether Catholic belief concerning

indulgences contradicts my understanding of the Satisfaction Model and thus disproves my

contention that the theory of purgatory I’ve attributed to Catholicism is equivalent to the

Sanctification Model; whether the doctrine of indulgences is actually true (or for that

matter whether there’s actually a purgatory containing souls to be indulged in the first

place) is a question well beyond the scope of this paper.

In that spirit, then, consider Pope John Paul II’s explanation of the Catholic Church’s

indulgence-granting behavior. Note first that the conception of purgatory with which he

operates is identical to the one I have adumbrated above: the purpose of purgatory derives

from the fact that although the believer is already reconciled with God he still “must be

gradually ‘healed’ of the negative effects which sin has caused in him (what the theological

tradition calls the ‘punishments’ and ‘remains’ of sin)” prior to entering heaven, because

communion with God requires that every “imperfection of the soul must be corrected” by

Christ, who “removes from [souls in purgatory] the remnants of imperfection” in

preparation for their heavenly reception. Accordingly, as above, the ‘temporal punishment’

a person suffers in purgatory “serves as a ‘medicine’ to the extent that the person allows it

to challenge him to undertake his own profound conversion,” which is at bottom “the

meaning of the ‘satisfaction’ required” of him before he attains to the beatific vision.34 With

this framework in place, the teaching on indulgences takes shape under the following two

25

assumptions. First there is the conviction, previously voiced, that just “as in their earthly

life believers are united in the one Mystical Body, so after death those who live in a state of

purification [i.e. purgatory] experience the same ecclesial solidarity” they enjoyed during

their tenure on earth, from which it follows that believers still undergoing their earthly

pilgrimage may “offer up prayers and good works on behalf of [their] brothers and sisters

in Purgatory.”35 Second, there is the (no doubt more contentious) belief that under certain

carefully specified conditions, the Church has the power to grant “a remission before God of

the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven.” On this

picture, then, the Church’s intercessory power makes it possible to assist souls in purgatory

by advancing their sanctification in special, nonstandard ways, but nonetheless in ways that

do not differ in kind from praying for them, and thus do not involve anything on the order

of a forensic transaction absolving them of accumulated penalties or fines. Here is John

Paul II:

The Church has a treasury … which is “dispensed” as it were through

indulgences. This “distribution” should not be understood as a sort of

automatic transfer, as if we were speaking of “things.” It is instead the

expression of the Church’s full confidence of being heard by the Father when

… she asks him to mitigate or cancel the painful aspect of punishment by

fostering its medicinal aspect through other channels of grace. In the

unfathomable mystery of divine wisdom, this gift of intercession can also

benefit the faithful departed, who receive its fruits in a way appropriate to

their condition. We can see, then, how indulgences, far from being a sort of

“discount” on the duty of conversion, are instead an aid to its prompt

generous and radical fulfillment.36

26

Now whatever exactly one thinks about the distinctively Catholic ecclesiology underlying

these claims it is undeniably clear that insofar as these ecclesiological claims are accepted

there is no conflict between belief in the efficacy of indulgences on the one hand and, on the

other, the thesis that purgatory’s exclusive purpose is to transform the lapsable into the

sanctified. In other words, there is a way of understanding indulgences for the dead

(which, if John Paul II may serve as representative, isn’t too far removed from how

Catholics do understand indulgences) that is consistent with the Satisfaction Model of

purgatory as I’ve laid it out. Unquestionably, it remains “unfathomably mysterious” how

exactly the ‘medicinal’ feature of temporal punishments is supposed to be administered

through an alternative “channel of grace” which brings about the desired sanctifying effect

without the typical associated pains. But mystery isn’t equivalent to inconsistency. And

since my ambitions in this paper do not include trying to eradicate mysteries like this one, I

am satisfied with the result that, mysterious or no, the doctrine of indulgences does not

undermine my claim that the Satisfaction Model and the Sanctification Model may properly

be considered one and the same.

One final concern should be addressed. If the Satisfaction Model truly is a “forward

looking” theory oriented toward rehabilitation, sanctification and the like, what accounts

for all the ideas about flames and torments and agonizing tortures and whatever else

contributes to making the atmosphere of purgatory generally unpleasant? Aren’t these

assumptions concerning how much it hurts to get ‘purged’ much easier to reconcile with a

view on which purgatory is more or less a temporary taste of hell, a place for people to go if

they do not quite deserve to be consigned to the flames forever, but who do not deserve to

27

pass into heaven entirely unscathed? And doesn’t that suggest that my thesis is false, that

the Satisfaction Model really is just about vindictive retributions after all?

Much could be said about the pain associated with purgation, and certainly much

more than what I have the space37 to say it in. For the present, then, I shall leave the task of

responding to this question in the hands of St Catherine of Genoa, whose suggestive

remarks about the pains of purgatory (circa 1490, about 50 years after the Council of

Florence) seem a fitting way to pull together this article’s main themes:

The basis of all the pains [of purgatory] is sin, whether original or actual.

God created the soul pure, simple and clean from all stain of sin, with a

beatific instinct towards the one from whom original sin, in which the soul

presently finds itself, draws it away. When actual sin is added to this original

sin, the soul is drawn still further from him … When a soul draws near to the

pure and clear state in which it was at its first creation, its beatific instinct is

rediscovered and grows continually stronger with such force that any

obstacle preventing the soul from finally reaching its goal appears to be

unbearable. The more it glimpses this vision, the greater its pain. Because

the souls in purgatory are without the guilt of sin, there is no obstacle

between them and God except their pain, which holds them back so that they

cannot reach perfection through this instinct. They can also see that this

instinct is held back by a need for righteousness. For this reason, a fierce fire

… comes into being, which is like that of Hell, with the exception of guilt …

And as for guilt, these souls are just as they were when they were originally

created by God, in that God forgives immediately the guilt of those who have

passed from this life distressed by their sins, and having confessed them and

resolved not to commit them anymore. Only the corrosion of sin is left, and

they are cleansed from this by pain in the fire. When they have been

cleansed for all guilt, and united in their wills with God, they may see him

28

clearly (to the extent that he makes himself known to them), and see also

how much it means to enjoy him, which is the goal for which they have been

created.38

If we take into account St Catherine’s insights, the painfulness of purgatory need not be

taken as proof that its purpose on the Satisfaction Model differs from the point of purgation

on the Sanctification approach. Indeed, St Catherine’s remarks make it abundantly clear

that the Protestant version of purgatory recently put forward in this Journal has been

anticipated within the Catholic tradition centuries before this one, even if it has at times

been differently expressed. Therefore, neither the existence of purgatory nor the purpose

behind it constitutes an authentic point of division between Catholics and those Protestants

who accept its reality.39

The University of Oklahoma

NOTES

1 See Justin D. Barnard, “Purgatory and the Dilemma of Sanctification,” Faith and Philosophy 24

(2007), 311-330, David Vander Laan, “The Sanctification Argument for Purgatory,” Faith and

Philosophy 24 (2007), 331-339, Jerry Walls, Heaven: The Logic of Eternal Joy (New York:

Oxford UP, 2002) and Hell: The Logic of Damnation (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Press, 1992),

David Brown, “No Heaven Without Purgatory,” Religious Studies 21 (1985), 447-56, and John

Hick, Death and Eternal Life (New York: Harper & Row, 1976). C.S. Lewis’ discussion of

purgatory, in his Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (Harcourt Brace & Co, 1964), 106-111,

is also frequently cited in this connection.

2 Barnard, “Purgatory and the Dilemma of Sanctification,” 326.

3 Ibid., 326, my emphasis.

4 Barnard, “Purgatory and the Dilemma of Sanctification,” 326-327.

5 Barnard, “Purgatory and the Dilemma of Sanctification,” 325.

6 Barnard, “Purgatory and the Dilemma of Sanctification,” 329, n. 7.

7 This is the argument advanced by David Brown in “No Heaven Without Purgatory.”

8 Justin Barnard formulates this argument in “Purgatory and the Dilemma of Sanctification.”

9 Thus according to Michael Stoeber, unless we are prepared to endorse the twin theses of

karma and retributive rebirth as set forth in the Hindu tradition (which Stoeber himself

considers to be the wisest course) then we must instead appeal to a purgatorial realm,

understood as a state in which the unfinished growth and maturation of the individual may be

remedied. Such a state, he argues, is “a necessary supposition of teleological theodicy” when

we reflect on the suffering and death of innocent children in particular, for if “the tortured

child is removed from the teleological scheme without the chance to realise the telos that

justifies moral and natural evils of the world, then that theodicy fails. To suggest that the child

simply passes away is to deny divine goodness. To suppose that the child is granted eternal

life is to render divine providence arbitrary or elitist. And, in any case, both proposals imply

that evil cannot be fully explained in terms of the teleology,” Evil and the Mystic’s God: Towards

a Mystical Theodicy (University of Toronto Press, 1992), 169. See also John Hick, Evil and the

God of Love (Harper, 1978).

10 Actually, two more. I have borrowed ‘Sanctification Model’ and ‘Satisfaction Model’ from

him as well.

11 Here I understand ‘saving faith’ to be whatever sort of faith it is that distinguishes the elect

from those devils who “believe and tremble” (Jas 2.19). I take it that such faith is identical to

the ‘faith working through love’ (fides quae per dilectionem operatur) of which St Augustine

spoke in his On Grace and Free Will 18-20, but nothing in my argument hangs on this

particular formulation of it.

12 See St Augustine, City of God XXII.30. For a very enjoyable overview of the medieval

discussion concerning the freedom and impeccability of the saints, see Simon Francis Gaine,

Will There Be Free Will in Heaven? Freedom, Impeccability and Beautitude (T&T Clark:

Continuum, 2003).

13 Barnard, “Purgatory and the Dilemma of Sanctification,” 325.

14 Ecumenical Council of Florence, Session 6.

15 Stoeber, Evil and the Mystic’s God, 167.

16 Barnard, “Purgatory and the Dilemma of Sanctification,” 326.

17 With respect to the proper interpretation of the Catholic dogma it is worth bearing in mind,

as Linda Zagzebski (“Purgatory,” in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy [New York:

Routledge, 1998], 838) has noted, that when the official teaching on purgatory was first

hammered out at the Councils of Lyons (1274) and Florence (1439) it was done “with the

intent of reconciling the Greek Christians,” who objected to much of what the legal and penal

language in which the dogma is formulated tends prima facie to suggest. Given that the

Eastern Orthodox mode of theological expression is much more ‘organic’ or ‘natural’ than

‘legal’ or ‘juridical’ – e.g., salvation understood in terms of deification as opposed to

justification, purgatory seen as a process of growth and maturation as opposed to satisfaction

and punishment, etc. – it seems reasonable to believe that the Catholic participants would not

lightly have aggravated Greek sensibilities with respect to the content of the doctrine of

purgatory being propounded.

18 Catechism of the Catholic Church §1472, emphasis in original; cf. §§1849-1850.

19 St Anselm, Cur Deus Homo I.11-15, 19-25. Cf. St Thomas, Summa Theologica, III, q. 48 art. 2,

4; q. 49 art. 3; q. 68 art. 5 and see also §§601-615 of the Catechism.

20 Catechism §1473.

21 Ibid.

22 Catechism §1472, emphasis in original.

23 Ibid.

24 Catechism §1459.

25 Catechism §1865.

26 Catechism §1459. Compare also St Thomas’s endorsement and explanation of the definition

of satisfaction according to which “satisfaction is to uproot the causes of sins, and to give no

opening to the suggestions thereof” in the Summa Theologica, Supp. III, q. 12 art. 3 (Fathers of

the English Dominican Province): “By ‘causes’ we must understand the proximate causes of

actual sin, which are twofold: viz. the lust of sin through the habit or act of a sin that has been

given up, and those things which are called the remnants of past sin; and external occasions of

sin, such as place, bad company and so forth. Such causes are removed by satisfaction in this

life, albeit the ‘fomes’ [i.e. the ‘fuel’ of concupiscence, the effect of original sin], which is the

remote cause of actual sin, is not entirely removed by satisfaction in this life though it is

weakened.”

27 Catechism §1473. Also instructive in this connection is St Augustine’s distinction between

the ‘remedial’ punishments of this life and of purgatory, suffered by those who haven’t

completely subdued their carnal desires prior to the final judgment, and the non-‘purgatorial’

or eternal punishments of the wicked following the final judgment in hell; see City of God

XXI.13, 15-16.

28 Catechism §1426, §1474.

29 Pope Benedict XVI, Encyclical Spe Salvi §§45-47.

30 Barnard, “Purgatory and the Dilemma of Sanctification,” 323.

31 See St Bonaventure’s remarks in St Roger Bellarmine, De Purgatorio IV, dist. 20, p. 1, a. 1, q.

iv, as cited in the Catholic Encyclopedia entry on “Purgatory,”

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12575a.htm. The thought that purgatorial afflictions

include uncertainty as to the final deliverance of the soul is represented, for example, in St

John of the Cross: “This is the reason why those who lie in purgatory suffer great misgivings as

to whether they will ever go forth from it and whether their pains will ever be over. For,

although they have the habit of the three theological virtues – faith, hope and charity – the

present realization which they have of their afflictions and of their deprivation of God allows

them not to enjoy the present blessing and consolation of these virtues. For although they are

able to realize that they have a great love for God … they cannot think that God loves them or

that they are worthy that He should do so; rather, as they see that they are deprived of Him …

they think that there is that in themselves which provides a very good reason why they should

with perfect justice be abhorred and cast out by God forever. And thus, although the soul in

this purgation is conscious that it has a great love for God … yet this is no relief to it, but rather

brings it greater affliction … [when] it sees itself to be so wretched that it cannot believe that

God loves it … [and] is grieved to see in itself reasons for deserving to be cast out by Him for

Whom it has such great love and desire,” Dark Night of the Soul II.7, trans. E. Allison Peers

(New York: Image Doubleday, 1990), 113-114.

32 I note that the truth of this claim may depend upon the acceptance of Molinism. Thanks to

Tom Flint for calling this to my attention.

33 And, for that matter, there’s no reason to think departed souls couldn’t return the favor. So

St Augustine, City of God XX.9. I realize of course that the efficacy of petitionary prayer, (this

understanding of) the communion of the saints, and the existence of purgatory are all

controversial assumptions. I myself am prepared to accept them, but all I ask of my readers is

to allow them for the sake of discussion.

34 Pope John Paul II, General Audience, Wednesday, 29 September 1999, §§2-3.

35 Pope John Paul II, General Audience, Wednesday, 4 August 1999, §6.

36 Pope John Paul II, General Audience, Wednesday, 29 September 1999, §4.

37 To say nothing of the competence; why “the flame of Everlasting Love/doth burn ere it

transform,” as Newman puts it, seems to me a question better left to the mystics.

38 St Catherine of Genoa, Treatise on Purgatory III.5, in The Christian Theology Reader, ed.

Alister McGrath (Blackwell: Oxford, 1995), 360.

39 Thanks to Tom Flint and two anonymous referees for their helpful remarks on a pervious

draft of this paper.